


A Cryptic Confession

by DeathSponge



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Confession, Fluff, M/M, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-04
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-09 02:13:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11094762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathSponge/pseuds/DeathSponge
Summary: Illya has seen Solo in a myriad of moods and moments... but never like this.





	A Cryptic Confession

Illya has seen Solo in a myriad of moods and moments. He’s well-acquainted with the man’s ‘I’m-a-smug-bastard-who-just-got-one-over-on-you’ face (well, his fist is, at least). He’s briefly met ‘scared-but-trying-not-to-show-it’, sex pollen induced arousal, angry as hell Napoleon with red stripes along his cheekbones like war paint, and even the rare Sincere-Solo-Specimen, on one very serious occasion.  He’s seen the man tortured, tongue-tied, tired; starving, shot, stabbed… even – though he hates to remember it – a completely blank Napoleon, slack-jawed and absent of its usual charm, fallen prey to a THRUSH brainwashing device.

Illya thought that he had seen (and analysed) every expression on the other operative’s face… but he has never seen this look.  
  
Solo shifted uncomfortably in the hotel’s lurid orange loveseat, back squirming like a small boy being forced to sit at the adult’s table for the first time, and desperately trying not to screw it up. His face looked …off-kilter somehow. There was no sparkle behind those usually bright mischievous eyes. His dull sockets were emphasised by dark shadows, which made the man look ill, as though he hadn’t slept for about a week. His jaw was tensed. A muscle twitched erratically in his cheek, though not from injury or anger. Illya noted with some concern that his forehead was uncharacteristically marred by deep worry lines, like gouges in pale earth, and there were pinched lines between the man’s eyebrows, and around his mouth. Napoleon looked for all the world as though he had just done something terrible, and Illya was wary to discover what it was that had made the usually debonair Mr Solo look so wasted and – well, unlike himself.  
  
The blond man bit his lip, and ventured delicately, “Cowboy. Is… something _wrong_?”  
  
The dark-haired agent’s usually striking eyes flickered up to him - Illya would even say embarrassedly, if he hadn’t known better – and then cast down at his own fidgeting hands. Looking without seeing – a first for the analytical thief-cum-spy.

Solo swallowed and licked his lips, and Illya leaned forward on his seat expectantly.  
  
“…No,” came the answer at long last; an answer hardly worth waiting for. The Russian was beginning to lose his hard-won patience. The fingers of one hand began tapping the face of his father’s watch – steadily, though, and not (luckily) the erratic drum beat of an incoming episode – and he rested his chin on his other hand wearily.  
  
“Look, Cowboy. You called me on communicator, said you had something ‘big’ to discuss’. All we have discussed so far is what weather is like outside. This is not ‘big’,” Kuryakin nodded, as if to further illustrate his vehement agreement that weather was not worth dragging a man across fourteen streets and a set of long, winding hotel stairs for.

At last, Napoleon Solo uncrossed his ankles and looked up at his fellow agent.

“The thing is, Peril… Oh Christ, but where to begin?” His head fell into his hands, fingers grasping at the roots of his hair, previously brylcreemed into perfection as usual, but now a tousled mess. Combined with the dark circles under Solo’s eyes, and the wrinkled nature of his usually pristine suit, Illya began to worry that there was really something wrong, and his mind automatically began running through likely scenarios and solutions.  
  
“Look Solo,” Illya began uncertainly, “I have no time for games or pranks, so if this is yet more of your… misdirection, I-“  
  
“It’s not misdirection, though I appreciate that you think all I am is smoke and mirrors,” Solo sighed, finally prising his head from his hands and more-or-less meeting his partner’s eyes.

Illya, for his part, would not take his eyes away from the rumpled man opposite him, and he glared insistently.  
He flexed his hands, folded them carefully in his lap and simply stated, “Solo – _talk.”_  
  
As though he had uttered a magic spell, Napoleon’s mouth fell open and he stammered:

“Illya, I-I… I think I’ve fallen for you.”

* * *

  
The room was silent, Illya frozen in disbelief as the other man cringed at what he had just said. The usually smooth and suave Napoleon Solo floundered, dredging up more words as though they could wash away what he had just said.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he said, holding up a hand. “I know it’s ridiculous. I know you’re a big bad Russian, and that you still probably hate me and all I stand for, but I seriously think I love you. I dream about you – every fucking night, Peril! And it’s not even sexual stuff!” Napoleon looked genuinely disquieted by this confession, hands curling in in the thighs of his well-cut trousers, as though he were trying to wring what he was trying to say out of them. “It’s not even fucking sexual, or I could understand that. Y’know, we’re two guys, living in each other’s pockets, forced to share the same insane fucking reality.” Illya nodded gently.  
  
“If it was just sex,” Solo uttered, looking upset, “I could just put it down to hormones, but it’s NOT!” With this cry, Napoleon leapt up, startling Illya who leaned back in his chair, clutching his glass of neglected whiskey like a teddy bear.

“It’s just domestic nonsense,” he started pacing in front of the coffee stable, “like cooking dinner together, and arguing over who sleeps on what side of the bed.” He paused for breath, “and it’s not just the dreams! You’re in my head when I’m awake too, I think about you ALL the time; it’s all I can do not to just stare at you all fucking day long.”

Solo gestured at himself plaintively as he continued, “I love WOMEN! I’m supposed to love women! But… YOU! You sit there with your ridiculous Russian idioms and your 6 foot fucking 5 frame, and your… your _good_ heart and it’s like… it’s like my brain keeps saying to me “This is it, Napoleon! If life wasn’t complicated enough before, this is love!”  
  
Napoleon looked straight into Illya’s eyes, pleading and passionately unhinged, and in that moment the Russian spy knew that all was lost.

Passionate declaration over, Napoleon’s pacing began to slow, and he looked everywhere but Illya’s eyes.  
“I know that _this_ is not what I’m supposed to do. I know that this is probably going to get me a _severe_ beating from you as soon as I stop talking, but I just couldn’t keep it in anymore. I was going crazy; this wanting you and knowing that I’m nothing to you… it’s killing me. If you want me to relocate, request a new partner or just plain get the hell out of dodge, I get it… but I just had to say it.”  
  
And with that, Solo finally stopped his pacing and threw himself back upon the loveseat, a tornado suddenly out of air.

“Okay,” said Illya, quietly.

Napoleon looked up, half bewildered and half accusatory.  
“ _Okay_?” he asked, not sure whether to risk probing further, lest he incur the Russian’s legendary wrath.

“Yes, okay. Is okay, Cowboy.”   
  
“Are you being deliberately cryptic, Peril, or has my declaration pushed you over the boundaries of sanity into a place where you can no longer feel rage?” Napoleon asked, only partly joking.

“Maybe in America, Cowboy, people hide what they say in double-meaning, but I speak plain Russian, and I say ‘okay’. This is okay. You say you love me? Okay.” Illya looked at Napoleon softy, and slowly leaned across the table and reached out his hand to tentatively touch the smaller man on his knee.  
  
“Riiiight,” said Napoleon, looking at Illya’s large hand resting atop his knee with some confusion. “So… what does this mean now?”

Illya felt for the poor man sitting opposite him, looking wrecked and confused, and obviously unsure as to whether he dared feel a shred of hope.  
  
Illya took pity on him. “It means that I am okay with you thinking that maybe you love me. That maybe I feel for you too, and have for while. I will not deny that this,” he gestured around at the hotel room, “has been surprise, but… it is good surprise.” He spoke shyly, and squeezed Napoleon’s knee playfully.  
  
Like that, much of the tension that the American agent had been carrying dissipated, and it seemed as though the man’s tendons had suddenly turned to rubber. Napoleon let out a sigh, and with that he sank to his knees on the floor, hands splayed on the coffee table, looking like a man crouching in prayer.

Illya smiled, reached out, and cupped one giant hand gently under Solo’s chin, forcing him to look up.

“It is as you say, tovarishch. This is it. This is love.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, there's my first completed fanfic in years! I hope it wasn't too wordy and pointless, and that someone out there enjoyed reading it! Just wanted to add my contribution to this amazing fandom, and what better way to do so than with a tentative declaration of love between two Cold War-era spies?!


End file.
